new home lab, ESXi on Workstation, raid controller compatibility?

I am setting up a new home lab and I don't want to go with dedicated machines that create noise, suck up power, etc. etc., I'll just run ESXi in Workstation on my "normal" desktop and be done with it.

I am thinking to buy the LSI MegaRAID SAS 9271-4i ( http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/MegaRAIDSAS9271-4i.aspx ) which is currently not on the HCL for ESXi. But that shouldn't matter, right? If it's seen by the OS that runs Workstation the storage will be present in Workstation and abstracted to ESXi running within it?

Just need to find a 3rd party HSF for that controller card so it doesn't burn out in the desktop case.

Correct. If you run your ESXi hosts in Workstation they the only OS that matters is your hosts OS that is running Workstation. How much drive space are you thinking you will need? I ask because I'm thinking you might be better with a SSD or two and call it a day.

I won't need a lot of space, but I do want to simultaneously deploy vCloud Director, spawn a bunch of linked clones, vShield Manager, vCVA, vCOPS, basically all the infrastructure stuff along with an couple three ESXi hosts and VMs (AD DC, etc.) inside of that.

I suppose what I could do is to forget about the controller, save myself 500 bucks, and just run an NFS server inside Workstation and export each SSD as individual target while taking care to not put too many VMs on each SSD.

Thuleman said:

I won't need a lot of space, but I do want to simultaneously deploy vCloud Director, spawn a bunch of linked clones, vShield Manager, vCVA, vCOPS, basically all the infrastructure stuff along with an couple three ESXi hosts and VMs (AD DC, etc.) inside of that.

I suppose what I could do is to forget about the controller, save myself 500 bucks, and just run an NFS server inside Workstation and export each SSD as individual target while taking care to not put too many VMs on each SSD.

Click to expand...

Sounds like you have a plan. A couple of SSDs will give you WAY more IOPs that your SAS/SATA setup. Space will be a limiting factor of course.

I've been happy with the (now) low-cost WD Raptor drives.
Last I checked, 1TB for around $200.

I ended up getting an LSI RAID (with cache) and a few Raptors - been running well.
And, for home? Not sure if the speedy SSDs (at a cost of much lower storage capacity) is worth the trade-off.

As for running ESXi within Workstation?

Well... having ESXi on a different, inexpensive box is well worth the extra investment. Given the number of times I've had to re-boot my Win7 workstation would have lead to some serious frustration in restarting the VM servers.

I typically host RHEL/CentOS - so there's no need for expensive graphics on the ESXi machine. It's also more stable being completely isolated from (less reliable) consumer software platform (i.e. Windows).

GaryS said:

As for running ESXi within Workstation?

Well... having ESXi on a different, inexpensive box is well worth the extra investment. Given the number of times I've had to re-boot my Win7 workstation would have lead to some serious frustration in restarting the VM servers.

Click to expand...

For my home lab I don't really need a machine that runs all the time. I'd potentially work on the home lab a couple of hours per day, maybe a bit more on the weekend. I don't see the benefit of powering something for 24 hours if I only use it for 2 max. Even at ~200W that's still close to $1/day I have to pay for something I don't use, nevermind the extra cost of the hardware for a separate server. Just not worth it to me.

I haven't given the boot-up and shut-down of the environment within Workstation too much thought yet, but I think that it shouldn't be too tricky to just create vApps for the different things I want to have running and then just script the boot-up and shut-down of the different vApps. That way I could just suspend the vCenter and bring everything else up and down via script.

I started with VM-Workstation. Currently using v8.
My desktop computer is a 2x Xeon (LGA 1366). I'm able to run a few instances of RHEL (etc.) without slowing things down.

With VM-Workstation, I haven't had a need for ESXi until the new Xeon CPUs arrived (cooler, faster, quieter). Problem though was that the new Xeon E5s were (and still are) damn expensive for home-labs. In contrast, the E3s are priced reasonably but lack the the power I wanted for Desktop CAD support (graphics). I also wasn't ready to build yet-another workstation...

So, the E3 "server" was born
special thanks to Phillip R. Jaenke research on the topic ("Dragon" configuration)
see: http://rootwyrm.us.to/reference/babydragon-ii-hardware-compatibility-list/

The ESXi "server" (in quotes because it's really just-another mid-tower case) is quiet and cool. I shut it down in the evening - though it runs most days.

With the 2nd computer running ESXi I'm also now able to test out various network configurations without risk of losing connectivity on my desktop (typically dialed into a larger private network). And, talking about VPN, I didn't want Juniper (VPN) FUBAR'ing my server platform (given inherent control/policies it brings along).

I do plan on moving my entire desktop machine over to CentOS (away from Windows). From Linux, I'll host a few Windows VMs dedicated for VPN and Corporate-office work (MS-Word, PPT, etc.....). But, that stage of the project is for a future date.


Picture of the ESXi box (scroll to end of page)
http://garysamuelson.com/blog/?p=568

Just as an update on this, I finally got around to buying some stuff to make this all work.

I ended up with going the cheapo route by buying

2x SNT SNT-BPSS425A 1 x 5.25" Bay to 4 x 2.5" Hotswap SATA/SAS HDDs/SSDs 6.0 Gbps
2x SYBA SY-PEX40039 PCI-Express 2.0 SATA III (6.0Gb/s) Controller Card
4x SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD128BW 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

This is running on 24GB RAM and an i7-930. The second 4x enclosure will hold a couple SSDs I already have as well as a couple traditional 2.5" disks I have for backup.

This will all be running on VMware Workstation with nested ESXi.